[karajorma]

Seriously? Do we have to explain this AGAIN? Some people have ridiculously short memories.

[Luis Dias]

Lets not go there again.

If they want to give JP2 a post-humous honorary paladin level of achievement or whatever they call it... who is anyone else to say no? Make him a saint, a double saint, a triple mega-super-sayan saint, whatever rocks your boat dear fellow christians.

[InsaneBaron]

Yes, that thread was nobody's finest hour.

First off, there's an inherent contradiction in saying that people who are unconcerned enough about Catholic teaching to exhibit behaviors that put them at significant risk for the diseases in question are going to care enough about Catholic teaching for Catholic policy regarding condoms to be relevant.

Second, to be fair, the Catholic Church does have an effective solution to the problem, aka abstinence till marriage. Yes, many people aren't going to follow it, but I don't think you can blame the Catholics for that.

Third, this is something of a derail.

[The E]

Second, to be fair, the Catholic Church does have an effective solution to the problem, aka abstinence till marriage. Yes, many people aren't going to follow it, but I don't think you can blame the Catholics for that.

Abstinence only works in an environment where everyone practices it, which you won't find anywhere on Earth. So no, it doesn't work, and its secondary effects (like promoting ignorance about sex) do way more damage than good.

[InsaneBaron]

Second, to be fair, the Catholic Church does have an effective solution to the problem, aka abstinence till marriage. Yes, many people aren't going to follow it, but I don't think you can blame the Catholics for that.

Abstinence only works in an environment where everyone practices it, which you won't find anywhere on Earth. So no, it doesn't work, and its secondary effects (like promoting ignorance about sex) do way more damage than good.

It works for the individuals who practice it. And no, it does not promote ignorance.

[Colonol Dekker]

Abstinence by its own practical definition is abstinent. In b4 nazi pope.

[InsaneBaron]

Abstinence by its own practical definition is abstinent. In b4 nazi pope.

Question. Why is this kind of trolling allowed? I was told there was no double standard in this regard.

[StarSlayer]

Second, to be fair, the Catholic Church does have an effective solution to the problem, aka abstinence till marriage. Yes, many people aren't going to follow it, but I don't think you can blame the Catholics for that.

Abstinence only works in an environment where everyone practices it, which you won't find anywhere on Earth. So no, it doesn't work, and its secondary effects (like promoting ignorance about sex) do way more damage than good.

It works for the individuals who practice it. And no, it does not promote ignorance.

Talk to the ignorant kids having anal sex because they think they are still virgins and they won't get STDs.  Telling young people to just not have sex in lieu of providing meaningful sexual education is a recipe for failure.

[Polpolion]

Abstinence is the perfect non-solution to the safe-sex problem. The idea that everyone is going to wait until marriage to have sex is silly, but it gets absolutely asinine in places that have terrible sex education (or none at all). Try telling your kids not to eat unhealthy food without telling them what unhealthy food is and see what happens. This is the same problem.

[InsaneBaron]

Second, to be fair, the Catholic Church does have an effective solution to the problem, aka abstinence till marriage. Yes, many people aren't going to follow it, but I don't think you can blame the Catholics for that.

Abstinence only works in an environment where everyone practices it, which you won't find anywhere on Earth. So no, it doesn't work, and its secondary effects (like promoting ignorance about sex) do way more damage than good.

It works for the individuals who practice it. And no, it does not promote ignorance.

Talk to the ignorant kids having anal sex because they think they are still virgins and they won't get STDs.  Telling young people to just not have sex in lieu of providing meaningful sexual education is a recipe for failure.

Teaching people how these things work and teaching them to limit their use of them are not mutually exclusive, and I've personally watched the Church do both.

[StarSlayer]

Second, to be fair, the Catholic Church does have an effective solution to the problem, aka abstinence till marriage. Yes, many people aren't going to follow it, but I don't think you can blame the Catholics for that.

Abstinence only works in an environment where everyone practices it, which you won't find anywhere on Earth. So no, it doesn't work, and its secondary effects (like promoting ignorance about sex) do way more damage than good.

It works for the individuals who practice it. And no, it does not promote ignorance.

Talk to the ignorant kids having anal sex because they think they are still virgins and they won't get STDs.  Telling young people to just not have sex in lieu of providing meaningful sexual education is a recipe for failure.

Teaching people how these things work and teaching them to limit their use of them are not mutually exclusive, and I've personally watched the Church do both.

Well I've seen them not, YMMV.

[Polpolion]

Teaching people how these things work and teaching them to limit their use of them are not mutually exclusive, and I've personally watched the Church do both.

It's not strictly a Catholic problem. I went to a Catholic middle school and received adequate education, but the real problem is when you have a handful of moronic parents petitioning the school board to delay sex education until 12th grade. This happens in a lot of places, not to mention places where there are no real schools and the extent anyone hears about this is in church on Sunday, where they sure as hell aren't going to give you a lecture on safe sex.

[karajorma]

Abstinence by its own practical definition is abstinent. In b4 nazi pope.

Question. Why is this kind of trolling allowed? I was told there was no double standard in this regard.

He's not trolling. He's pointing out that these discussions have a history of resulting in discussions of Pope Pius XII.

[InsaneBaron]

Teaching people how these things work and teaching them to limit their use of them are not mutually exclusive, and I've personally watched the Church do both.

It's not strictly a Catholic problem. I went to a Catholic middle school and received adequate education, but the real problem is when you have a handful of moronic parents petitioning the school board to delay sex education until 12th grade. This happens in a lot of places, not to mention places where there are no real schools and the extent anyone hears about this is in church on Sunday, where they sure as hell aren't going to give you a lecture on safe sex.

A valid point. It can be hard, I suppose, to decide on the best age for this kind of education (you don't want to teach them before they're mature enough to control themselves, but you don't want to delay too long either.) Ideally the parents would decide when their children were mature enough, but not all parents are willing to take the responsibility on themselves the way mine were.

[InsaneBaron]

Abstinence by its own practical definition is abstinent. In b4 nazi pope.

Question. Why is this kind of trolling allowed? I was told there was no double standard in this regard.

He's not trolling. He's pointing out that these discussions have a history of resulting in discussions of Pope Pius XII.

Wait, what?

Oh never mind...

[Dragon]

That's why you provide them meaningful sexual education, then tell them not to have sex and explain why (if they haven't figured it out already from the lessons).

In general, you're confusing two things: willing abstinence and ignorance about sex. Indeed, a hypothetical "proper" Christian would, after getting the whole thing explained, come to the conclusion that abstinence is the best (from religious standpoint) option. Spreading ignorance has an effect of enforcing abstinence, up to a point where ignorant people "re-discover" sex, then it breaks down. On the contrary, proper sexual education would cause the need for birth control to become immediately obvious. For someone who follows Christian rules, abstinence is the only choice of birth control. In fact, I think that once it's not a big, forbidden unknown, resisting the urges would be a lot easier. Of course, this is all assuming an intelligent person who is also a devout Christian. For unintelligent ones, no amount of education will ever work (you'll always get a few idiots who just won't listen, whether it's sex ed, driving lessons or mandatory first aid training), and a non-devout Christian would just use a condom.

JP2 didn't personally claim these things, IIRC. People under his employ did, and he certainly wasn't disapproving those messages. On the contrary, his stance on the topic of safe sex was definitely not helping to contain the spread of HIV and other STDs throughout Africa.

So this is what I meant, and the clarification I asked for. It can't be said those were his lies, though he might have believed them (as evidenced by him not disapproving of them). In general, sexual matters might be the area in which the Church has the most to learn. JPII could have definitely done a lot more to modernize the Church in this area, but at the same time we should not expect one man to fix everything.

I think that despite places where he failed, he still done enough to deserve Sainthood. Also remember that openness about sexuality and STDs is mostly a modern idea, and most of his pontificate was in times before it became as common as we take for granted. We should remember that he died about a decade ago. Maybe now that times are different and Pope Francis is at the helm, we'll see some advancement in that area.

EDIT: Talk about ninja'ed... Well, looks like I'm agreeing with InsaneBaron again. Anyway, whether sex ed is done at all and how highly depends on the clergy in the region. "The Church" has been teaching people about why abstinence is a good idea in some regions, where in others it just told people "if you have extramarital sex you'll go to hell". This is because it doesn't seem to be clearly regulated from the top, it's mostly up to individual priests, and they're a diverse lot.

[InsaneBaron]

That's why you provide them meaningful sexual education, then tell them not to have sex and explain why (if they haven't figured it out already from the lessons).

That's sorta what I was driving at, with the reservation that you don't want to teach kids till they're mature enough to understand.


EDIT:

EDIT: Talk about ninja'ed... Well, looks like I'm agreeing with InsaneBaron again.

Ninja'ed back

[Dragon]

Actually, I think that sex ed should start very early, but be tailored to the child's age. That way it's never something alien and forbidden "just because". We're so overloaded with sexuality these days that it's impossible for even the youngest children not to encounter it, despite all the laws. So it should be made as clear as possible early, and the education should continue to adulthood. That would probably also help smooth out relationships between different genders a bit.

[Scotty]

I will consider abstinence an effective contraceptive method when it demonstrates that it can be an effective contraceptive method.  So far it has not.  Whether this is because of external influencing factors (poor sex ed) or not, the case remains that abstinence is not an effective contraceptive method in the modern world.

[karajorma]

Which makes expecting it to effective in the developing world where people have even less understanding of the issues rather foolish.

First off, there's an inherent contradiction in saying that people who are unconcerned enough about Catholic teaching to exhibit behaviors that put them at significant risk for the diseases in question are going to care enough about Catholic teaching for Catholic policy regarding condoms to be relevant.

No there isn't.

You're missing the point that in a place like Africa, Catholic education might be the only education someone gets. So if the education they get is "You shouldn't use condoms" or quite simply "Don't have sex until you are married" and they never hear any reasons why they should use condoms, they're quite simply not going to use condoms.